Assassins Creed Valhalla's Greatest Secret Has Finally Been Revealed

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is chock full of secrets and surprises, but perhaps the greatest one has [...]

By Matthew Aguilar

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is chock full of secrets and surprises, but perhaps the greatest one has finally been discovered, and it's a testament to not only the developers for crafting such an elaborate one but also the fans and sleuths who finally discovered it. It all begins with the Assassin's Creed Valhalla Collector's Edition, which it turns out featured some hidden clues. These never would have been found though if not for Access the Animus, who released a video in January revealing they had decoded the Isu language that is part of the game (via IGN).

Now that they had the language, they could decode any message using it, including some messages that were found on the Collector's Edition packaging. Those messages included terms like "hidden inside", "this lake", and "now", and knowing they were onto something, the team kept going.

They got a helping hand from JorRaptor, who posted a video that revealed you could find a secret Isu Bow in the game called Nodens' Arc. All you had to do was hit an unbreakable piece of Iron Ore, exit the game and reload your save to unlock it, but Valhalla Narrative Director Darby McDevitt revealed that this was a "brute force" method to solving this mystery, and Access The Animus finally found the steps needed to properly solve it.

This coincided with more translated text from the Collector's Edition box that read "The Key Is The", which was under a drawing of a crow. The crow also held another secret, the sword Excalibur, and so the "Key" it was referring to was the "Sword", more specifically, Excalibur, since it can break anything.

Going off of the previous video that showed the brute force method, fans noticed the location, a lake in Northumbria, looked a lot like the island of Singapore, and it turns out Ubisoft has an office there. That was a big missing piece, as the office was in the exact location of the unbreakable ore. This was further cemented thanks to the realization that the Isu language was designed by designer Antoine Henry, who works in that office.

The last major piece was the realization that the lithographs in the Collector's Edition featured symbols that when pushed together covered a picture of the sun. Access the Animus realized this referred to the time of day the ore needed to be hit.

Once you put it all together, it meant that you had to hit the unbreakable ore with Excalibur at sunset to unlock the Nodens' Ard bow, and this has to be one of the most elaborate unlockables ever.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox Series X, PS5, Stadia, and Luna.

Did you unlock the Legendary Bow yet? Let us know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things Assassin's Creed!

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